Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors - Ephesian Outpourings... 'Writing and the Renaissance. Yet the tangled web of separated families that Shakespeare weaves presents significant differences from each of his originals, highlighting ideas about family and marriage that Shakespeare undoubtedly had and which were to be further developed in later works. Plautus's Menaechmi provides a basic framework for Shakespeare's plot: two long-separated brothers, mistaken for each other. However, Plautus' two brothers differ significantly in their attitude: one is "cheerful, generous and fun-loving", the other "clever, calculating and cynical" (Kinko, p. 10). Shakespeare's Antipholi seem as confused as their Menaechmi relations, but more interchangeable in their general temperament. Plautus' Amphitryon proposes the idea of doubling the servants as well as the masters, but these are duplicates by divine action: some are gods in disguise fully aware of the situation, others are confused mortals. So why resort to mortal twins behaving the same way? Perhaps it is in the family members that Shakespeare adds – Egeon, Aemilia, Luciana – that we discover the motives for his adaptations. One of the main themes of Shakespearean comedy is that of the new community: hence the series of stereotypical marriages which are commonplace in almost all comic acts V. Here we have only one new marriage, between the (Syracusan) Antipholus Erotes and Luciana, the restoration of the happiness of Antipholus Sereptus (Ephesian) and the once-shrew Adriana, and renewal of the long-broken marriage bonds between Egeon and Aemilia (taken and expanded from Gower's Confessio Amantis ). But the characters begin the play almost entirely separated from the community: Egeon has long since lost his wife and half his offspring, and abandoned his famous son for a seven-year search; Antipholus Erotes seems blithely unaware of his father's presence in town, so complete is their separation; even Antipholus Sereptus is separated from his wife Adriana, not enjoying the state of fruitful marriage which must be the lot of comic characters. They are all awash in a capitalist society of business and obligation, with little room for generosity but plenty for the officer, debtor's prison, and harsh laws against Syracuse foreigners that even the Duke cannot overturn . Here Saint Paul comes into play, with the prescriptions of his Epistle to the Ephesians (!): “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as to the Lord.... Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved Church, and gave himself for her.... So men must love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (Eph. 5:22, 25, 28). Through Luciana's philosophy and Aemilia's revelation of Adriana's insight, The Comedy of Errors shows, in a more diluted form, the same philosophy of mutual and cooperative subjection that Shakespeare would explore more fully in The Taming of the Shrew a few years later later. Without the structure and society that a family provides, a Shakespearean character becomes lost amid the riot and chaos of civilization: the bitter Jaques abandoning Arden's weddings, the ascetic Malvolio locked in the dank cellar, Lear madman wandering the moor, Leontes pines for his lost Hermione. Comedy of Errors is a prologue and experience for upcoming drama families.

Essay / Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors - Ephesian Outpourings... 'Writing and the Renaissance. Yet the tangled web of separated families that Shakespeare weaves presents significant differences from each of his originals, highlighting ideas about family and marriage that Shakespeare undoubtedly had and which were to be further developed in later works. Plautus's Menaechmi provides a basic framework for Shakespeare's plot: two long-separated brothers, mistaken for each other. However, Plautus' two brothers differ significantly in their attitude: one is "cheerful, generous and fun-loving", the other "clever, calculating and cynical" (Kinko, p. 10). Shakespeare's Antipholi seem as confused as their Menaechmi relations, but more interchangeable in their general temperament. Plautus' Amphitryon proposes the idea of doubling the servants as well as the masters, but these are duplicates by divine action: some are gods in disguise fully aware of the situation, others are confused mortals. So why resort to mortal twins behaving the same way? Perhaps it is in the family members that Shakespeare adds – Egeon, Aemilia, Luciana – that we discover the motives for his adaptations. One of the main themes of Shakespearean comedy is that of the new community: hence the series of stereotypical marriages which are commonplace in almost all comic acts V. Here we have only one new marriage, between the (Syracusan) Antipholus Erotes and Luciana, the restoration of the happiness of Antipholus Sereptus (Ephesian) and the once-shrew Adriana, and renewal of the long-broken marriage bonds between Egeon and Aemilia (taken and expanded from Gower's Confessio Amantis ). But the characters begin the play almost entirely separated from the community: Egeon has long since lost his wife and half his offspring, and abandoned his famous son for a seven-year search; Antipholus Erotes seems blithely unaware of his father's presence in town, so complete is their separation; even Antipholus Sereptus is separated from his wife Adriana, not enjoying the state of fruitful marriage which must be the lot of comic characters. They are all awash in a capitalist society of business and obligation, with little room for generosity but plenty for the officer, debtor's prison, and harsh laws against Syracuse foreigners that even the Duke cannot overturn . Here Saint Paul comes into play, with the prescriptions of his Epistle to the Ephesians (!): “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as to the Lord.... Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved Church, and gave himself for her.... So men must love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (Eph. 5:22, 25, 28). Through Luciana's philosophy and Aemilia's revelation of Adriana's insight, The Comedy of Errors shows, in a more diluted form, the same philosophy of mutual and cooperative subjection that Shakespeare would explore more fully in The Taming of the Shrew a few years later later. Without the structure and society that a family provides, a Shakespearean character becomes lost amid the riot and chaos of civilization: the bitter Jaques abandoning Arden's weddings, the ascetic Malvolio locked in the dank cellar, Lear madman wandering the moor, Leontes pines for his lost Hermione. Comedy of Errors is a prologue and experience for upcoming drama families.

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